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Sunday, November 13, 2011

It's Hard to Get a Sick Day When You're Unemployed

I think it was a week ago that I woke up dizzy, queasy, kind of shuddering all over and generally feeling too weak and achy to get out of bed and then got up anyway and discovered that there was a small river running through my back yard.

One of my first thoughts was that it was a great time to be unemployed. I could stay in bed. I could take time out to do what I needed to do with the flood. I could, in short, pull the blankets back over my head and...

Well, no. I did have a few freelance projects in the works, and the deadlines weren't going to change just because I was sick and flooded. In fact, it turned out to be more complicated than when I'd had a full-time job: if I was really too sick to work in my employee days, I could just call or email one person and let them know and then that was it for the day.

Not so much with this freelance thing. There were three or four different people at different companies involved. There were different deadlines, and it was tough to know which (if any) would be affected, since I didn't know how long I was going to be sick. No one cared what I was doing that day in particular, which meant that no one needed to know that I was sick or that there was a newly formed creek running behind my house.

But the work still needed to be done, the dog still needed to be walked (in the rain, around the flooding), Tori still needed a ride to choir (in the rain, around the flooding)...and six or so days later, I still haven't gotten a down day to rest and recover, and I'm still feeling like crap. And still pushing to get things done, even though they're fewer things, because I'm not all that diligent or efficient when I feel like crap.

I'm starting to think it might have been very helpful to have a job to stay home from.